Active Server Pages for Dummies - Softcover

Hatfield, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 076450603X ISBN 13: 9780764506031

Publisher: For Dummies, 1999

Synopsis

Ready to create interactive Web pages? Then welcome to Active Server Pages For Dummies, 2nd Edition. In this guide, you'll see exactly what ASP is all about and how it works.

You may be a Web site or intranet developer for a company, or the owner of a personal or small business Web site, or a programmer who wants to get in on all the hot new technologies. In any case, you're always looking for ways to make your job easier and your Web site cooler. You probably

• Know how to use Windows NT or Windows 95/98 and your web server software, at least well enough to get around.
• Are familiar with HTML and have played around with some advanced tags.
• Have had at least a little exposure to a scripting language like VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, or REXX.
• Have worked with a macro language such as you'd find in a spreadsheet or other application.
• Have actually done some programming in Java, Visual Basic, C, or COBOL.

But don't worry. To get the most out of this book, you don't have to be a programmer or an HTML guru. Active Server Pages makes activating your Web site easy.

In Active Server Pages For Dummies, you'll discover

• What Active Server Pages is and how it fits into the world of CGI, ISAPI, ActiveX controls, and all the other Internet stuff that promises to make your Web site more exciting.
• What you need to know about the programming languages.
• How to use objects that are a part of your web server to get all sorts of information and to change the way things work.
• How to access database information from a Web page.
• What happens after you start to pull together the capabilities to create real Web applications.

Active Server Pages is easy. You've heard that said before, only to be overwhelmed with enough confusing gibberish to choke a camel. But with this guide, you can believe it.

About this title

Review

Active Server Pages (ASP) is the best way to create dynamic Web sites--that is, Web sites based on the contents of a database--under Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and other Microsoft Web platforms. Active Server Pages for Dummies proves that despite the initially intimidating appearance of some ASP code, the system isn't hard to learn and can be a lot of fun.

The book delivers a carefully structured introduction to ASP technology. The examples aren't all academic either--you'll find code (printed and on the companion CD-ROM) for a date-stamper, a banner-ad rotator, a guestbook, and even a near-real-time chat room and a system for managing classified ads.

Though this book includes sections on VBScript and JScript, you'll probably want to combine it with a language text if you lack familiarity with at least one of those languages. Still, the language material that's here serves as a good introduction to the basics and enables you to make sense of the scriptable ASP objects that make the technology so powerful.

Though this isn't an object reference, the author explains the capabilities of each major server component and provides example code that uses many of them. That's the strongest aspect of this book, in fact--the excellent example code you can learn from and adapt to your purposes. --David Wall

Topics covered: Basics of ASP, VBScript, JScript, the ASP object model, server components, database connectivity, Visual InterDev, and popular ASP applications.

From the Back Cover

CD-ROM gives you ASP samples, software, and more

Now covers the latest ASP features

Harness the power and flexibility of ASP to customize your Web content If you want dynamic Web pages that create personalized content for visitors or automatically pull updates from a database, then ASP is for you. This friendly guide shows you step-by-step how to build powerful Active Server Pages applications that will take your Web site to the next level. all this on the bonus CD-ROM Trial versions of Chili!Soft ASP and Chili! Reports Enterprise Edition Sample ASP pages Sample databases, scripts, images, and other files from the book For details and system requirements, see the CD-ROM appendix Plus leading Internet software

Discover how to: Understand the ASP open development environment Customize and personalize Web pages Access database information Write scripts in VBScript or JavaScript Work with ActiveX components

Get smart! www.dummies.com

About this edition

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 076450603X
• ISBN 13: 9780764506031
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 408